Tag Archives: Christian values

The Golden Age of Christian Values

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If only we could get back to the golden age of Christian Values. The one that existed when I was young, before things changed so much and when life was so much better. People believed in God, went to church every Sunday and had good old fashioned, biblical values. The troubles of today could so easily have been averted if only we’d stayed true to those beliefs.

Yes, If only we could go back…

‘Let me take you there,’ says a disembodied voice.

‘That you Jesus?’ I ask.

‘If you like,’ it replies, ‘but I’d rather think of myself as the Spirit of Times Gone By. Let’s you and I return to some of them together and see if we can’t find the Golden Age of Christian Values.’

I feel him take my hand and suddenly we’re travelling through a vortex in time, away from the 2020s and into the past. As we do so, my smartphone disappears from my pocket, as if it had never existed. Disconcertingly, my Fitbit does the same. I’m sure going to miss them.

‘Take a look here,’ says the voice as a vista opens up on front of us. ‘Behold, 2003.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Things were so much better even just 20 years ago. No wokeness, no talk of irreversible climate change… and no one had heard of gender identity or drag queen story hours!’

‘Really?’ my guide says. ‘That’s how you remember it? America was still reeling from 9/11, a Christian president was about to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attack and there were a record number of tornadoes across the US. Things weren’t that great for a whole load of people, especially the ordinary folk of Iraq.’

‘I guess not,’ I concede. ‘Maybe we need to go further back. Find that special time when we hadn’t abandoned God and he hadn’t left us to our own devices.’

‘Let’s do that,’ my host says, as once again we take to the swirling vortex, emerging seconds later in what he says are the early 1990s.

‘Much better,’ I say. ‘No destructive social media, no same-sex marriage anywhere. The Berlin wall has come down and the Second Gulf War is set to be a great success.’

I can feel my guide staring down at me, though oddly I can’t quite make out the details of his face. ‘Really?’ he says again. ‘I’m surprised you mention that. There’s also the Siege of Sarajevo on the horizon, racial unrest following the beating of Rodney King and in Bangladesh 138,000 people have just been killed by an earthquake. Plus, as you say no social media to speak of. You do remember, don’t you, how much you like arguing with atheists on it. I’m not sure this is the time we’ve been looking for either.’

I have to agree it isn’t, as once again he takes my hand and we return to the vortex, emerging mere seconds later… when?

‘The ’80s,’ he announces. ‘AIDs, the Iran-Contra scandal, acid rain, Chernobyl. I don’t see any Christian Golden Age here.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘At least there was the Moral Majority, a genuinely Christian president and in England, a Prime minister with Christian principles. She even quoted the Bible sometimes. We had politicians of real integrity in this time period.’

I feel him raise an eyebrow even though I can’t see him. ‘A Christian president who left thousands to die,’ he remarks.

‘They brought it on themselves. God’s judgement on a sinful generation,’ I tell him, pleased to score a point.

We move on. ‘The 1960s,’ he declares. ‘Could this be your Golden Age?’

‘If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that the 1960s were not the Golden Age. Definitely not. That’s when everything started to go wrong. Moral relativism, Women’s Lib, Civil Rights riots, Stonewall, psychedelic drugs…’ I stop to catch my breath. ‘Long hair, promiscuity, nudity, abortion, decadent music. Oh Lord, it was awful and it paved the way for the depravity and dissolution that was to come. If ever there was a decade in need of God it was this one.’

‘Let’s not forget Assassinations and Vietnam,’ he adds.

‘For sure. That’s what comes of abandoning God.’

‘It looks like the 1960s were nearly as bad as you say 2023 is. Maybe things don’t really change as much as you think.’

‘Maybe,’ I concede. I haven’t really thought about it before.

‘You know, says my companion, I’m beginning to think we’re further than ever from the Golden Age you seek. But I’m prepared to give it one more shot if you are.’

I agree and we’re off again, emerging this time in the 1950s. ‘This is it!’ I exclaim, ‘This is Christianity’s Golden Age! People going to church, looking after their neighbors; there’s prayer in school and real Christian standards. This is where it all happened and it’s here where we should all return.’

‘I see what you’re saying,’ the figure beside me replies, ‘but it wasn’t good for everyone, was it.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask incredulously.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘it wasn’t a great time if you were black. There was segregation and I assume you know there were still lynchings in this era.’

‘I didn’t say it was perfect,’ I object.

‘No?’ he says. ‘In this Golden Age, women were expected to keep house, raise children and serve their husbands, just like it says in the Bible. Too bad if they wanted a life beyond that.’

I can’t see a problem with this but something stops me from saying so.

‘And of course it was illegal to be gay back here. Fines, imprisonment and ruin were the price to be paid. Staying hidden was the only option for many.’

‘Not a bad thing,’ I murmur.

‘Then there was the Korean War in which 2.5 million people died, including 36,000 American servicemen; the Cold War with its ever present threat of nuclear annihilation; McCarthyism, the paranoia of The Red Scare and the persecution of those presumed to have left wing views… Need I go on?’

‘No, no. I take your point. Perhaps this isn’t the Christian Golden Age I’m looking for after all.’

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ my companion says. There is no Christian Golden Age. If we were to go back another ten years we’d find the Second World War and the Holocaust when 6 million of God’s Chosen People and 5 million others were brutally, senselessly murdered.’

‘I guess,’

‘You guess? And even if we were to go back to the start of your Faith you would find the infighting, corruption and immorality prevent even that from being a Golden Age.’

‘Oh, I think you’re wrong there. It says in Acts…’

But he cuts me off: ‘My friend, your Golden Age has never existed.’

‘I’m sure we could find it somewhere,’ I mumble.

‘No,’ he says. ‘This is it. This, here in the ‘50s is as good as it gets. But only for some. This is where we stop. This is where you stay.’

‘Stay? I don’t want to stay here. I need to get back to my own time, to my family and my technology. I’ve atheists to argue with online.’

I see his eyes glow high above me. ‘The only way you’ll get back is to live your life from this point on, through the decades you’ve dismissed, and see how far you get. But it’s unlikely you’ll get back to 2023. Life expectancy in the 1950s is much shorter than where you’ve come from. And you’re no spring chicken to begin with.’

‘No, please,’ I stammer. ‘You can’t. I don’t belong here. This isn’t a Christian Golden Age after all.’

But I was on my own. My companion, like my shaky beliefs, had simply vanished.

 

 

 

 

 

Christian Values

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I keep coming across the idea that the West is abandoning its ‘Christian values’ (here for example). Some say we’re doing so without having anything with which to replace them, while others bemoan the influence of ‘wokeism’, Islam and social media.

This seems to me to be lazy journalism. What Christian values are we talking about?

  • Self-sacrifice, humility, selling all to help the poor, putting others before oneself? These are Christian values according to gospel Jesus but they have never been the prevalent values of Western culture.

  • Prohibitions against lying, stealing and murdering, together with admonitions to be civil and respectful predate the Bible by some considerable time. Then, as now, they were not values adhered to by everyone but were, nonetheless, ones that ancient cultures aspired to.

  • Sexual mores, then. This is, after all, what most Christians mean when they refer to Christian values. These are forever in a state of flux in any culture; however much authorities attempt to legislate sexual practices, consenting adults will always do what they want to do. The sixth commandment and the Bible’s homophobic stance would not exist if adultery and homosexuality were not practised in the barbaric past. Meanwhile, polygamy, paedophilia and non-consensual sex (with slaves) get a free pass in the Old Testament. The West’s sexual mores, which in any case vary from culture to culture, are not based on the Bible.

  • Anti-Semitism, superstition, slavery, the subjugation of women and the denigration of those of different religions, race and sexuality, are Christian values, all derived from the Bible, that the West has upheld in the past, and occasionally returns to still. If these are the Christian values we are abandoning then good, and good riddance too. We’re all better off without them.

The West’s values are capitalism, ‘civil rights, equality before the law, procedural justice’, education, empiricism and democracy, none of which derive from Christianity. Arguably they emerged in the West as a reaction against the church and the establishment, with their oppressive values, during the Enlightenment. These are humanistic values that, it seems to me, are not under threat today (though some of them could benefit from reform).

This being said, other values, particularly the right to free speech, empiricism, privacy and the right to live peaceably according to one’s own principles do appear to be under threat. There are aspects of wokeism and its troublesome twin, cancel culture, that pose a threat to these values, which have been, until recently, highly prized in the West. wokeism gnaws troublesomely at the West’s self-esteem and self-respect, rewriting its history and insisting it apologise and make reparation for the actions of people who lived hundreds of years ago. Even so, the values wokeism threatens were not derived from Christianity; you will not find individuals’ rights, empiricism and free speech promoted in the Bible, nor by later church tradition. These values were hard won by enlightened men and women and subsequently evolved, as all values and principles do, over the last couple of centuries.

Despite the loud lament that the West is losing its Christian values, it isn’t. Apart from a few unpalatable prejudices that can be traced back to the Bible, the West does not operate on Christian values and has not done so, if it ever did, for a very long time.

God sends New Savior!

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jesuscity

Well, Stateside Christians, you got your man. Donald Trump will be president come January and you’re largely responsible for that. 81% of you voted for him. By my reckoning that’s about 50% of his total vote; he couldn’t have done it without you. Now he’s going to be your nation’s savior. He’s going to make America great again. He’ll return the nation to Christian values and morals. He’ll honour God and bring him back into the public arena, just like you want him to.

Or will he? How do you get God-fearing Savior from a petulant, misogynistic individual who has repeatedly shown himself to be racist, sexist, xenophobic, divisive, adulterous, abusive, ignorant, vitriolic, dishonest and avaricious; a man who denies climate change, is full of his importance (and nothing else), who makes promises he can’t keep and probably had no intention of keeping even as he made them. A man who couldn’t name a single verse in his ‘favourite book’, the Bible; who admits he’s never asked God for forgiveness and who has shown no sign of any kind of Christian humility, compassion or morality; a man who is even now appointing the most reactionary, right-wing extremists to his transitional team (so much for draining the swamp!) How can this man be the one who is going to restore America to a glorious Christian past it never really had, and make it a truly God-fearing nation once again?

Someone with these ‘qualities’ cannot possibly turn America into the promised land, even though you’ve convinced yourselves he’s another King Cyrus, the heathen king in the Old Testament who helped God’s people in their time of need. Trump is no Cyrus, even if he is the 45th president and Cyrus’s story is told in Isaiah 45 (yes, some of you think this is significant). You have been duped, again, American believers. But it is not Trump who has deluded you; it is you yourselves. You have persuaded yourselves that despite all of the evidence, Trump is man who can be greatly used by God.

There was no divine guidance behind Trump’s campaign and God won’t be manipulating him into doing his bidding once he takes office. This is because, primarily, there is no God to do any these things, but even if there were, why would he? Why would he ensure a man whose values are the direct antithesis of all (you say) he stands for, became the leader of the free world? Why would he be interested in making a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is Donald Trump? Wouldn’t your God of Reason start with someone who is already one of his own? Someone who is genuinely a Christian; someone, say, who has tacky pictures of himself and Jesus hanging in his house? Or an evangelical – let’s call him Mike Pence – who comes pre-packaged with genuine, and genuinely vicious, Christian faith and a necessary anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda?

It’s you and you alone, Christians, who have turned Trump into a Savior. It is you who have created the silk purse. You’ve ignored what has been in front of you throughout the presidential campaign and have projected on to an individual who has done nothing but tell you what you wanted to hear, a spiritual significance he does not have. You have made of Trump an artificial Man of God, just like your predecessors did two thousand years ago with that other imposter, Yeshua Bar Joseph. Like them, you’re going to find out that the man you’ve elevated to savior status is anything but, because the Donald Trump you’ve elected is a construct of your collective imaginations. You’re about to discover that the real Donald Trump is not the man you’ve deluded yourselves into thinking he is.